The assignee of this application has recently, within about the last three years, introduced a new marker sleeve construction to the market that is rapidly gaining wide commercial acceptance. The new construction comprises a flat web made of base and top films, such as plastic films, seamed together to define individual marker sleeves separable from the web along the seams. Assemblies of marker sleeves of this type are described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,361,230, "Assembly of Tubular Marker Sleeves", Downing et al, and in U.S. Pat. No. 4,363,401, "Sleeve Marker Assembly", Savagian, both assigned to the assignee of this application. Flat marker sleeves of this type offer a number of significant advantages as compared to the prior art tubular marker sleeves, such as for example those disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,894,731 and 4,032,010, both assigned to Raychem, and the new flat marker sleeves have replaced tubular sleeves with some end users even though the tubular sleeves have been long established as the predominant product in this field.
An applicator machine for handling webs of flat marker sleeves was developed to meet the requirements of users who must identify a large number of articles and is described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 635,340 entitled "Marker Sleeve Applicator Machine", Wirth et al, assigned to the assignee of this application, and now U.S. Pat. No. 4,574,440. The machine of said application provides for feeding a strip of marker sleeves to an application station, removing the endmost sleeve from the strip and opening it while it is retained in position at the application station. The machine operator can then insert a wire through the open sleeve and withdraw the wire from the application station bearing the marker sleeve as an identification device.
The machines of the aforesaid application are useful apparatus permitting the mechanical application of flat marker sleeves onto an article, such as a wire, to be identified. The present invention was developed to provide marker sleeve processing machines having new utilitarian capabilities of significant importance to end users of marker sleeves.
Marker sleeves intended for identification devices will usually have alphanumeric characters printed on them, such as serial numbers for example, so as to mark a specific article with its own unique legend. The current practice is to use marker sleeves with legends already printed on them when they are loaded into the applicator machine.
The printing may be done as a separate operation by those applying the marker sleeves, using some type of printing machine. This requires additional handling of the webs of marker sleeves, which increases the cost of processing the marker sleeves, and in some instances, could contribute to the premature separation of the sleeves from the web. The printing operation also requires the purchase of a suitable printing machine independent of the sleeve applicator machine.
Pre-printed sleeves may also be purchased, but this choice only shifts the printing operation to the sleeve supplier and does not assure that the printing of the sleeves will be more cost-efficient.
There are several drawbacks that persist with either of the above approaches to obtaining printed marker sleeves. First, there is the problem of replacing a sleeve that is inadvertantly mishandled and rendered unusable. To maintain a log of unused numbers in a series is considered inconvenient. Second, each user prefers its own system of serializing the marker sleeves with characters that may already have some meaning in its business, and this feature requires added setup or administrative time, depending on where the printing is accomplished. With pre-printed sleeves there is the additional problem of maintaining an adequate inventory so as to meet varying production requirements.
There were several technical problems to be overcome to improve the printing operation. The first problem was presented by the small programmable controller used for directing the operations of the prior sleeve applicator machine. Such a controller is well suited for sensing the state of single-signal input devices, such as photosensors, and operating single-signal output devices, such as solenoid-actuated valves. However, such a controller has limited input/output communication capability, and cannot be conveniently used to control sophisticated peripheral equipment, such as an electronic printer. User inputs to the prior sleeve applicator were made via a group of control panel switches, which is a typical input interface for a controller, but which is not suitable for entering characters to be printed on the marker sleeves.
There were other problems which militated against developing a processing machine of this invention that includes a marker sleeve printing operation. One of these was devising a system for the controller to position the endmost marker sleeve at the printer. Because the photosensors in the prior sleeve applicator were on the applicator mechanism, the web would not be "seen" at a printhead positioned at some distance from the applicator station. Another was to ascertain whether the sleeves should be printed in batches or one at a time. Yet another was the manner in which printing should be sequenced with the application of the marker sleeves. These problems and others were resolved by the invention.